Bad Overcoat?
Birds gotta swim,
Fish gotta fly,
I gotta love one yarn 'til I die.
Can't help
Knitting yet another sweater out of the most recent to die for yarn that I've just bought and can't stop touching.
(apologies to Billie Holliday)

I swoon. Dear, dear husband gave me a hefty gift certificate to Wild & Woolly for Christmas, and I've seen their entire stock way too much, so I waited until yesterday to make another trip down and see what they had. Well.

They had malabrigo. The yarn named inexplicably in Spanish, "bad overcoat." No idea what that's about. But the yarn...oh, the yarn...it's knitters' crack. I was patting it in the car. While I was driving. Yep, reached around and grabbed that bag and pulled out a skein and...well, let's just say we hid it when a police car cruised by.

I restrained myself enough to wind just one hank on my ball winder and piled the rest on the worktable to take a picture for you. Like butter, this is.

Purring inside, I then knit an inch or so each on the Hardangervidda (which is for dh and he'd really like it while the weather's still cold, and he's wonderful, anyway), also on the leaf cardigan. No pics as the progress is not really visible to the naked eye.

Brown thumb department:
I'm not what you would call a really good gardener. What I lack is stamina, really; I start well, and then eventually forget to water something for a week or maybe two, and then, it's dead. Beyond resurrection, usually. This is why I like geraniums; they actually thrive under this mistreatment.

Last spring, in a fit of inspiration after having visited the orangerie at Saltram, I thought, hey, I could grow a citrus something or other! The children reminded me of the two lemon trees I killed a couple of years ago. Accordingly, I approached this with some healthy caution (which is unusual for me), and explained to the salesperson at Lexington Gardens that I am really, really talented at killing plants, and asked for The Most Explicit Instructions Possible for caring for a lime tree. The tree lives. It gave us three limes last year and it's now going great guns. Behold!



The other weird little picture is my experiment with some turnip tops. I noticed there were little sprouts of fresh green coming out of the tops of some turnips I'd bought and stuck in the fridge for what was probably too long, and I thought I'd see if I could turn them into plants. The result amuses me. I keep watering them, they keep growing. Go figure. (Thank you for sharing that, Liz...) Does anybody know what you do with these next? Do I just stick them in the ground once it's no longer frozen? It'd be better if anyone in the house actually liked turnips, I admit.

Thank you for the holiday suggestions, sep and Lucia and kat; it's really helpful. See, the trouble I always have is that dh, wonderful though he is, is a native of those parts, and gets about as excited about visiting turista destinations in the UK as I do about visiting Cape Cod. Which is, not very. Canal boats! The Orkneys! Oh, yeah!

I've finally taken a look at the March almanac chapter, and it's the fabulous colorwork sweater this month. Deep breath. I'd love dearly to make the whole sweater, but given the other work on the plate at the moment, I think I'll be safe with a swatch hat and probably leave it at that. So much yarn, so little time.